"Is he straight or gay?" is a colossal mis-think. The entire concept is foundationally a myth.
A simplistic, inaccurate, and convenient, myth.

Hear me out.
Here's how it basically went down.

Sometime around when we were maybe about 6 years old,
we learned:

and

...and never thought about it twice.

We took as the gospel truth, we hardwired it into our very living identity, and we have ferociously protected and defended it ever since, as if it were our first born child. - that's why the first paragraph makes us feel a little hot.

It's so simple! It just makes sense!Everyone is straight  OR gay.

Just like everything is good  or evil.
And everything is on  or off.
And everything is black  or white.

Well here's the simple truth.
The trickier, more elusive, most intangible, and exciting, things in life like  and not to equate any of these, ...quite the opposite  crushes, love, attraction, arousal, or hardons, or however you're comfortable talking about that, heart-pounding... and butterflies in your stomach  these are parts of nature. Call it human nature, God's nature, or Nature nature, but these things are as foundational and natural to life, to our human experiences, as it gets.

And nothing in nature is black or white.

Nature is not binary.

Nature is not a computer.

Nature is not a coin-flip.

The sun is not ON

or off

Each day the sun shines
infinitely varied rays of sunlight beam down on us

from behind and in front and
through constantly morphing
clouds, and it is magnificent.

nature doesn't have light switches

.

The natural "Gaussian curve" of random distribution
appears throughout nature, and it looks like this:

Things far more often occur "together" than at the far extremes.

The nearly 7 billion people on earth

were not born with 1 of 2 opposed categories of feelings.

We did not come from the womb
with a secret hidden chip inside us somewhere
that is "Straight", or, "Gay.";

This does not, in fact, exist:

chart suggested by the 10% stat component of the straight and gay myth

But somehow we know this chart. We "learned" it.
Sometime when we were maybe about 6 years old. And we swallowed it hook line and sinker.

'Straight or Gay' will undo itself (and we can already see that it is) because it doesn't actually exist in nature, and nature will always win in the end. But we will be very slow to talk about it, publicly, because we invested in the myth so young, and now we are uncomfortable thinking differently about it, and we don't know any other way to talk about it.

"Straight or gay"  we hear it from scientists, doctors, ministers, teachers, lawyers, news reporters...
But the words don't work.
They speak to about 10% of the entire picture, if that, and they do that poorly.

The double standard:
Ever noticed how it's okay for two girls to play with each other's hair, even flirt a little? "I kissed a girl and I liked it." That track would not have topped charts if it'd been about two guys. In many places if two girls experiment it's "hot" and if two guys do it's violence and murder. Do we care if a girl is 'straight or gay' in the same way we care about whether a guy is? For many, 'straight or gay' is about cool vs. not cool, and that affects guys more than girls - because we learned on the playground that GAY=FEMININE and it's more critical to a guy's cool that he never exhibit feminine qualities than it is that a girl never have masculine qualities. 'Straight or gay' is about many things  culture, movements, gender, being cool or not... but it does not correspond to any truth or fact about about science and nature.

Consider guys:

The real reason we so desperately need to known as 'straight' is so that we are perceived as being like this guy,

...and not this guy.

...Or worse, this guy.

I swear to you, that is 99% of what it's all about.

No one's really analyzing their hardons or random sexual thoughts and doing a comprehensive personal analysis. It's not the private that matters  it's the public.
If cool wasn't a factor, you would see a very, very, different locker room.

We desperately want to be seen as the cool guy, as masculine, and be approved of.

We love that photo of Dean because he's so effortlessly cool, and masculine. That's the James Dean story we celebrate, that's the story we're sold. They just leave out the part about how he also slept with guys. It was the 1950s - a very conservative time - so that part is just dropped from the story.

It's 60 years later, and we have gay rights... and that's great, it really is.

But, gay rights means that

she can march in a parade.

and they can come out:

And again, that's great - it really is. But by no means is it the whole story.

 Guess what the modern "James Dean's" do...  ie guys today:

- the ones that are easily cool, effortlessly masculine. The athletes... the frat boys... the guys this culture celebrates.

when they mess around, they drop it from their story.

It happens, it's certainly not that it doesn't happen - and often. It's just simply dropped out of the story, and that makes it easy for us to assume or pretend it doesn't happen. They don't add it to a new facebook album. Girls, sports, jokes, accomplishments, these are part of the story. Same sexual attraction, experimentation, experience, fantasy, whatever,,, ... not part of the story.

There is no place in the 'gay or straight' myth for two guys who like girls to be attracted to each other. So we just pretend it doesn't exist.

We pretend STRAIGHT=90% and GAY=10%.
So even though

there's way more of this going on

than this,

or this,

We think we know what "gay" is. And what it looks like. And we comfortably believe that everyone else who doesn't look, or act, like that, is "straight".

Continuing to repeat a myth - from both sides -
- calling everything 1 of 2 words and leaving out everything inbetween -
doesn't make it factual... doesn't make it real.

What's real, is what actually happens,
whether you hear about it on facebook, or TV, or not.

guys are attracted to other guys  on whatever level you can manage to acknowledge it.

...maybe just notices he's funny.
maybe loves him "like a brother".
maybe one random time was physically attracted, or "curious".
maybe he's regularly physically attracted.
maybe they act on it, maybe they don't.
maybe they acknowledge it the next day, maybe they don't.
maybe he's occasionally romantically attracted.
maybe he's in love.
maybe they're just friends.
maybe they're best friends.
maybe they'll just be lifelong platonic "lifemates!", faithful to their respective wife or girlfriend.

guys are attracted to other guys.
it doesn't mean they aren't attracted to women.
it actually has nothing to do whatsoever with how attracted they are to women.
it has nothing to do with how many women they've slept with.
it doesn't mean they're 'gay.'
and it doesn't mean they're 'straight.'

it means there are attractions, one of the trillion+e10 of them bouncing around, naturally, wonderfully.

While the two words dominate the story,
beneath the surface, in the shadows,

Very amazing piece , really well done!
And it is so true!
I see so many guys (and girls!) doing homosexual acts (and that's all there
is, ACTS, there isn't such thing as straight or gay/les.....and "bi" is a
myth too !) yet they still put "straight" on their profiles online or tell
people they are straight. They do this even if they claim to be open minded
and talk about sexuality like this in a way because they still want the
societal benefit or whatever odd reasons they have.

Colorado Christopher20 May 2010, 00:29

This really made me think about how the myth has permeated our society,
what maintains it, and the myriad implications it has for our day-to-day
experience. Thanks so much for taking the time to put this together. It
really resonated with me. Keep up the good work, cap'n!

Steve28 May 2010, 20:30

What a great website, so true and such words of wisdom, well done. !!! Some
how, some day this information needs to be read and understood by as many
as possible, the truth needs to be said and heard !

Ken Harbison-Bleker07 Sep 2010, 22:19

I don't get it. Maybe I'm stupid. HELP!!!!!!!!!!!

Christ121 Sep 2010, 16:36

Whoever created this site is fucking awesome!!!
Wonder who it could be?!

Yes yes yes And yes!!!! I love everysingle word written.... All so
brilliantly put together to unlock the " straight truth " ;) love it

hanfrina surreal17 Mar 2011, 01:13

... "All You Need Is Love" The Beatles!!!

Alicante Airport31 Mar 2011, 15:19

Maybe you will want to add a twitter icon to your website. Just bookmarked
this blog, although I must complete this manually. Simply my $.02 :)

Remi16 Apr 2011, 10:04

thanks for this wonderful website. I'll me reposting this.

Greg16 Apr 2011, 22:02

I sorta think you're right--but maybe when we're younger we're attracted to
a broader set of potential sex partners. I know I slept with both boys and
girls before I decided I liked only boys. If you're saying experimentation
is part of learning who we are I completely agree.

Josh17 Apr 2011, 03:10

I do see where you're coming from, and I value your opinion. But I do think
there is a gay and a straight. However, I also think the levels of
gay/straight vary from person to person, in a sense that we're all somewhat
bisexual. All gay guys are attracted to girls (or A girl) to some level, as
straight men to guys or A guy to some level. My belief is that we're all
attracted to both genders, although we all have a preference, by which we
define the title of our sexual orientation.

JM17 Apr 2011, 05:14

This is the truth I've known all along. Just I was never able to put it
into words, and you did it wonderfully!
Thanks so much!! <3

JSB17 Apr 2011, 18:36

I actually feel comfortable with identifying as gay. But I'm willing to
understand your research. What sources did you use to get this information?

Esther18 Apr 2011, 09:55

Sorry. I don't see the point. It seems like you're saying that men can
like each other and be good to each other and hang out and that doesn't
make them gay. Duh. Obviously. By definition, that is true. Gay refers
to sexual orientation, so it has nothing to do with who you like to hang
out with and who you are friends with.

This page is no more illuminating than a page stating that a conductor can
enjoy cooking and not all chefs are conductors.

It seems like you're also saying that not all gay people fit the stereotype
of Liberace etc. Again, obvious. Not all asians fit the stereotype. Not
all opera stars fit the stereotype. Not all Dungeons and Dragons players
fit the stereotype. Not all Muslims fit the stereotype.

Still, how can we begin to discuss the differences when we don't have the
words for them. It's like talking about colors but only knowing red,
orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. If you don't know chartreuse,
primrose, ecru, etc, if you don't have the words for them and the
definition of them, you can't recognize them and you can't talk about them.

Silestra18 Apr 2011, 15:15

And amongst all this a place must be found for asexual, even less known,
talked about or admitted than gayness. I don't admit to it openly, only
because I don't want to embarass my partner of 16 years. Have you ever met
anyone who admitted to it?

H. Andreakos19 Apr 2011, 14:33

Hands down. Nuff said.

China04 May 2011, 23:46

IMHO you've got the right ansewr!

lmnop01 Jun 2011, 08:59

I disagree slightly, I mean it's definately true that many people who
identify as straight are in some aspects attracted to both sexes and same
with some gay people I'm sure. However I can at least speak for myself when
I say that I'm only attracted to other guys and don't feel attracted to
women in the slightest (it is impossible for me to get hard with a woman).
So I think some people are just gay or just straight. And I think that most
people who identify as gay are just gay, because if they were attracted to
both sexes they wouldn't chose a life of discrimination and the hardships
that society puts on gay people.

I believe that everyone is born gay or straight and even if they are
attracted to both sexes but in the end one attraction overpowers the other.
I think gay and straight is as black and white as male and female. Some
guys are slightly feminine, some girls are slightly masculine and some gays
will have some hetero-erotic feelings and some straights will have
homo-erotic feelings. I know I was born gay and I know a shit ton of other
gay people who know they were born this way also.

Also I think by saying everyone is attracted to both sexes you support the
homophobic belief that being gay is a choice, and that gives them more
reason to discriminate against us.